stow away my greys
by basterd
Summary: where vyvyan plants a tree, not really for a reason.


[AN: this is from a long time ago. it doesn't really have a pairing, so. if that puts you off then that's cool.]

* * *

Vyvyan comes back to the house and his breathing isn't right, but it never is with the pollution around this place. There's filth layered over his lungs, thick like tar, borne of passive inhalation and a weak survival drive. The air wasn't any better at his mum's flat but it was thinner, perhaps. Not so condensed. It passed through him easily without any eyes to watch. Maybe it's that she cares or maybe it's that she doesn't at all. It doesn't matter. Things are okay between them. Here… he doesn't know about here.

The garbage bag has torn in places but he's sellotaped around it to keep it in place. The plant is a bit crushed, more limp than it was before, but the roots are intact. It scratches against the side of Vyvyan's knuckles, the cut on his palm weeping sluggishly down the plastic. He doesn't think about it because all he can think about is that he doesn't have a shovel. He'll find something else. He'll dig with his hands.

He trails dirt through the house and he only knows because Rick yells it at him. He supposes he might clean it up later, if he's feeling charitable. He'll gauge Neil's reaction. Neil shouldn't, well, it's not. Neil. Shouldn't have to do this stuff. It's not his place. Not all the time. Vyvyan can. Do. Vyvyan rubs across the bridge of his nose. He'll think about it later. After he digs.

The earth is hard and dry. Packed in, riddled with roots. The plant won't live long here, but it's the only option he has. He'll make it work. He'll soften it, he'll find a place. He moves the plant out of his way, laying it on its side where the dirt won't fall on it. The roots get caught underneath his fingernails when he tries to tear at them, thin and woven and vexatious and his fingers sting when he jabs out angrily. It's too tightly packed. He falls back, bringing his knees up and resting his head on them, breathing in the smell of his own sweat.

'I have a spade.'

Vyvyan turns his head, looking at Neil's shoes because his face is too high up. Vyvyan wonders how long he's had them for, if he was the sort of kid who was always wearing a pair too big that he was waiting to grow into, or if his parents were pedantic enough to have him fitted properly. If they even cared. Vyvyan doesn't know a lot about Neil. He's never asked.

'Can you go away,' Vyvyan asks lowly. 'Leave the spade.'

Neil bends to put the spade on the ground, because he doesn't drop things and he doesn't offer things. He lives in the middle ground. Unobtrusive Neil. It's almost as frustrating as the roots.

The spade cuts through better, and Vyvyan can use his boot when the hole is wide enough. The sun arcs over him and falls into sunset by the time he can reach his arm in up to his elbow, and he pats in loose soil until it rises halfway up his forearm. The plastic rips half the leaves off with it when he tears it away, and the stem tilts when Vyvyan sets the plant in the ground. It doesn't matter. It'll sort itself out. Trees can do that. Trees are self-sufficient. They know what they're doing.

It looks small and overshadowed when Vyvyan stands back to look at it but it's solid. It has a home. If it dies, then it has a grave. It has its own place.

Vyvyan had thought something might loosen in his chest when he'd finished. He'd thought it might be one of those symbolic things Neil is always trying to explain, or Rick is singing about. He doesn't feel any different, except that his back hurts. He just feels tired, a pressure pushing in behind his eyes. He knows he shouldn't expect things. He learned that lesson.

The lads scramble when he comes back inside, falling into chairs and trying to look bored. It's something, Vyvyan supposes. Something normal. Like not much has really changed, after all.

'What's for dinner?' he asks.

'Uh,' says Neil.

'Rice,' says Mike.

'Rice,' Neil echoes.

It doesn't quite turn out to be rice, but it could be. It's in the same family, at least. Something grainy. Something more solid than it is liquid. It classifies as a meal, and Vyvyan eats his and most of Rick's when Rick disappears to the bathroom. He doesn't come back down, and the creaks of the upstairs floorboards interrupt the television noises every now and then. Vyvyan's knuckles clench a bit tighter every time he hears it, until he pushes himself up and says he's going to bed, stalking up the stairs with gritted teeth.

Rick is in the bathroom, which is the last place that Vyvyan looks, and most of the fight had left him when he'd realised how close his bed was. The frosted glass from the window is sitting down at Rick's feet and he's peering outside.

'Occupied,' Rick says. 'Honestly, Vyvyan, don't you ever knock.'

Vyvyan wavers in the doorway. It's dark, and he can't remember if that's from him knocking out the bulb. It may have been replaced. While he was gone.

'Why'd you plant it?'

'I wanted to.'

'Where did you even get it from?'

'I stole it. Why do you care, plants grow everywhere.'

'Stole it from where?'

Vyvyan's breath stutters out over his teeth. He turns and goes to his room, sits on his bed and undoes his laces until they're coiled in his hands, no longer attached to the boots. He doesn't know how that happened. He didn't mean to. He just wants to sleep.

* * *

He goes in to campus in the morning for the practical classes, but it ends up being mostly theory. A video is projected of open-heart surgery, and Vyvyan watches with mild interest until his feet get jittery from disuse and he leaves.

In his car, he bends down the rear-view mirror and inspects the veins running up his neck. He thinks about obstructing them. If he had an elastic band or something, maybe some string. The chain isn't enough because it's too bulky to bend. In the end, he just presses his fingers to the veins until he gets bored of his heartbeat and drives home.

Someone has put their bins in his usual parking spot and maybe that's what sets him off. He doesn't know, except that Mike's feet are barely touching the ground and he looks weirdly disappointed when Vyvyan lets go of his collar. Not even angry, although Vyvyan supposes he will be later.

He's garbling out something stupid in an attempt to scrabble back his dignity, and maybe it makes Vyvyan feel regret but he can't tell. He's not even listening. He apologises while Mike is checking the next room to make sure no one saw and goes outside before Mike can accept or reject it.

No one follows him out, although Neil must have been out here earlier. There's a watering can by Vyvyan's plant, but the ground is dry when he touches around it. There might be a tap out here somewhere but it would be on the side of the house if it existed and Vyvyan has no desire to walk back over there. His sits, instead, with his boots either side of the plant and picks at its leaves. They look somewhat healthy, greener than the grass, at least.

He digs underneath one of his cuffs to grab at the cigarette there, loosened tobacco hanging from the end, and lights it from the matches in his vest pocket. He puts the burnt match back in the box afterward. Not because Neil had asked him to start doing that. It's for the plant's sake.

He exhales up and away from the leaves, not that it would make a difference but because he feels it might negate it otherwise. One of those dumb symbolic things that he doesn't really give a shit about, but always ends up adhering to. He's still thinking about it when he drags down to the butt, and it's why he ends up stubbing it out on his arm. He curses abruptly and presses his mouth to the burn, stamping down on the dropped butt. He grinds it into the earth and stands when his anger boils and he can't get enough leverage to crush it properly. It doesn't help that Rick is laughing at him, standing some distance away.

'Piss off,' Vyvyan tells him.

'Well, aren't you a clever one.'

Vyvyan goes to push past him but Rick grabs his arm.

'What are you doing?' Rick looks like a weasel, a wide-eyed diseased rodent. His fingers dig in like thin bony clamps when Vyvyan tries to shake him off. 'Why are you so mad? What have you done?'

Rick is frowning, like it actually means anything to him. Maybe he's just looking to satisfy the presumptuous nosy prick part of him.

'I just want to know if I'm missing something, here. Because Neil's talking about suicide again and you've planted a tree and now even Mike is acting weird about something. If something's happening, then I want to know!'

Vyvyan's heartbeat jams in his throat and he thinks briefly that if he'd cut off the blood flow back in the car park then this wouldn't be happening. His fingers feel numb and cold, and he presses them against Rick's skin to see if he gets a reaction. He doesn't.

'You're being stupid,' Vyvyan tells him, and raps his knuckles against Rick's forehead until he lets go. Rick calls his name when he leaves, but then it's ingrained into Rick to always have the last word.

* * *

'Neil, for fuck's sake.'

Vyvyan's hands clench around Neil's wrist as he takes the knife from him. Neil winces and tilts back.

'I'm just chopping buk choy, Vyvyan. For dinner.'

Vyvyan blinks slowly, looking down so he can't see Neil's expression. He doesn't want to know if it's normal or judging or if it's — if it's pity. He watches the chopping board, some semblance of shame or irritation twisting in his stomach. Neil's other hand is still sitting there, holding the end of the vegetable in place. Vyvyan lets go of Neil's wrist and shoves him back.

'I'll do it. You do something else.'

Neil is quiet for a while, pottering about the kitchen, filling a pot twice before deciding he doesn't want it after all. He eventually migrates over to the far cupboard, staring at the variety of legume and other seed products inside.

'You've never helped me before.'

Neil's voice is soft and maybe hesitant. It's hard to tell with Neil, his mouth seems to move slower than his thought process. It's how Vyvyan knows that a lot goes down inside of there. It's how Vyvyan learnt to take him seriously about things. Those things. Vyvyan's mind stutters and he exhales through his nose.

'Thanks, I guess,' Neil says.

'Shut up.'

Neil shrugs and doesn't seem too taken aback, filtering in and out of Vyvyan's perception, humming sometimes. Vyvyan runs out of things to chop very quickly, and ends up chopping them all into halves, and then quarters, until they all sit in tiny segments. He takes the knife with him when he moves away.

'Anything else, Neil?'

Neil looks at him over his shoulder, the muscles behind his eyebrows shifting.

'Maybe, Vyv. You could open these tins, if you wanted.'

'Why can't you do it?'

'I don't know. Just… if you wanted to.'

Vyvyan comes back and sits at the table. Neil puts the tin opener near Vyvyan's hand, even though Vyvyan's palm is offered up, and moves back to lean against the bench.

'I hope you had a pleasant stay at your mum's house.'

Vyvyan frowns at him. Neil is scratching at his palms.

'And I hope… everything was all right.'

'I'm done, Neil.'

Neil glances around the kitchen before looking at Vyvyan, then he nods. Vyvyan echoes the motion lightly and goes upstairs for a bath. There's a thick muck in the bathtub and so he hovers over the basin instead, tugging his shirt over his head and washing beneath his arms and the places of his back he can reach. He doesn't have a towel so he dries off with his shirt and smells it. It could be worse.

He's pulled it back on when he goes downstairs where Neil is dishing up the dinner into two bowls, a plate and a mug. Mike makes a motion with his head toward Neil and then Vyvyan, and Neil shakes his.

'What is this,' Rick demands, pointing a finger between them. 'What are you doing?'

'Nothing, Rick. You need your eyes checked,' Mike says.

While he eats, Vyvyan pitches in to the conversation where required but most of it revolves around Rick's latest club meeting and Mike's condemnation of their policies. Mike's shoulders twitch while he speaks, like the ligaments are strained, but he talks easily to Vyvyan and doesn't shy away from him, and Vyvyan plays the dutiful role to console his own fears more than Mike's.

Neil chokes on a piece of buk choy halfway through his mug, and Vyvyan pounds him on the back until he's coughed it back up and decides he isn't hungry anymore.

* * *

Rick asks him if something is going on four times a day for five days. On the last one, he pleads. Vyvyan threatens to break all his fingers and nearly does until Rick twists out of his hold.

Neil asks if he can water Vyvyan's plant, and Vyvyan watches him from his bedroom window every afternoon to make sure he's doing it right. He doesn't know what the wrong way to do it is. He's hoping it might just click if he ever sees it.

The first time he visited the tree after Neil's attentions, the cigarette butt had disappeared and the earth around it been smoothed flat again. By the fifth day, there's a thin rod of bamboo stuck in beside the stem, the two held together by pieces of sellotape. Vyvyan wonders if it will actually help, if the tree will grow straight. If the tree will grow at all.

On this sixth day, Vyvyan doesn't get up.

The door rattles on occasion and it sends tremors through Vyvyan's bedframe, pushed upagainst it so it can't open. Voices filter through but they hover just outside of Vyvyan's consciousness. He lies until his hunger passes and turns into sickness and his muscles begin to ache. His head pounds when he slides off onto the ground, and he rests it against the cool floorboards until it eases up. No one checks on him past sundown.

* * *

'You've got a stick in your boat, Vyvyan.'

Mike sits adjacent to Vyvyan at the table, folding his hands atop it. He's either smiling or grimacing, gaze flicking down at the wood grain. 'You might say there's a balance in this household and some of the ducks think you're breaking cups, you catch my meaning?'

Vyvyan stirs his spoon in his cornflakes. He'd rummaged them from the back of the cupboard where they'd fallen from the last box, or one of the boxes before then. They had no milk or sauce, so he'd run the tap inside the bowl. The cornflakes have been sitting for a while, forming a paste when Vyvyan presses against them with the back of his spoon.

'What do you want, Mike?'

'I want to know that you will tell me if something is up, and I think something is up.'

Vyvyan leans his elbow against the table, resting his cheek against his palm. The paste flicks easily from the spoon onto the kitchen wall, where a large portion of it sticks.

'We've all got problems, Vyv. Rick's working himself into a lather over whatever this might be. The boy is really starting to grate on my boots.'

'Do you think Neil actually tries?'

Mike watches him for a moment.

'Tries what?'

'To kill himself. Do you think he really wants to?'

'I don't see why not. It's a sad world and if Neil wants out, he wants out.'

'I don't think he would.'

'Here's hoping,' Mike shrugs.

Vyvyan's own words rattle around in his head through Mike's next pep talk, through Vyvyan's light fussing of his plant outside and rearranging his room, through his nap on the stairs and right through lunch.

While Neil is washing dishes he hunches over the table and spews 'will you?' and Neil's joints lock up. Vyvyan thinks he may have laid out context before this. He remembers he was speaking but doesn't remember what about. Neil bites at his bottom lip and doesn't pretend to look confused.

'Would it inconvenience you?'

Vyvyan spreads his fingers out on the wood, stretching the webbing, thinking about the veins. Thinking about his cracked cuticles. Thinking about the scabs over his knuckles.

'Do you think you could tell me,' he says slowly, 'that you won't.'

'I don't think so, no,' Neil murmurs.

Vyvyan nods and flexes his fingers.

'But do you want to?'

Neil runs the sponge around the rim of the pot then rinses it and sets it aside.

'Not right now.'

'Do you think I'm stupid for wanting a relationship with my mum?'

Neil squints, and his fingers begin to scratch at each other again.

'I don't think you're stupid for anything, Vyvyan.'

* * *

Vyvyan's got Neil's shoes and a bunch of Rick's clothes in the shopping trolley and one of the leaves from his tree in his mouth. It has a sort of bitter, sappy taste but at least now he knows. Small flakes of it wash around in the saliva gathered in his mouth and he tries to push down the overwhelming feeling that he has to swallow it, he has to, he has to.

He spits in onto the pavement and watches the flecks of green swim idly inside the thick globule. The aftertaste sits strange in his mouth but he'll get used to it. He needs it there so he can categorise it. He needs to know.

The shopping trolley is a bitch to drag up the hill but once he gets to the top he can coast down, forearms braced on the edges and ready to abandon ship should something go pear-shaped. It inevitably does and Vyvyan doesn't end up as prepared as he thought, tumbling over the bitumen with his bones knocking about inside his skin. He lets the momentum roll him back to his feet because if he keeps moving then he's fine, that's the rule, just keep moving, and although his chin is wet he doesn't bother to wipe it away or check. If a tooth is hanging loose, he'd rather find out later.

The trolley landed near enough to the water that Vyvyan doesn't need to right it, just grabs as many clothes as he can and stumbles close enough to the edge that he can drop them all down. He throws the shoes in after and watches them sink for a moment before bobbing up again, drifting downwind with the rest.

When Vyvyan gets tired of looking at them he walks back home where Rick is waiting with one hand on his hip and another pointing accusingly. Vyvyan clocks him in the face and laughs. Rick reels and clutches at his cheek for a moment before grabbing Vyvyan by his chain, nearly cutting off the blood but not quite and Vyvyan wishes he would, he really wishes he would. Rick's slaps are loud but his palm is too cupped for it to hurt much except when he changes tactic and starts backhanding Vyvyan with menace. Vyvyan laughs and laughs and laughs and when Rick eventually leaves and Neil finds him, the moon sitting high in the sky through the open door, Vyvyan laughs some more.

* * *

Neil sings to the tree sometimes, late at night. Vyvyan can hear him from the bathroom, sitting with his back against the bathtub, touching at the wad of plaster across the deep graze on his chin. If he closed his eyes it might make him think of another place, another time, some sort of nostalgic bullshit like that. Vyvyan doesn't close his eyes, he just sits and wonders whether the cold or morning will find him first.

* * *

Rick wants to play sardines. He's banished hide and seek in blue biro in the People's Charter under claims of unfair play that lead to him never being told when everybody else has given up on the game. Sardines, he explains to them in the living room, has a much more friendly and inclusive atmosphere.

They end up playing because Mike agrees, and Rick demands that he not be the first one hiding. They rock-off to see who has to do it and Vyvyan falls to Neil's scissors and Mike's assertion that a rock could most definitely defeat a piece of paper.

He hides in the basement because there's a mattress there and he's been feeling the need for a kip all day. His throat has been feeling raw and his muscles are tight. He's staring at the ceiling, tired and frustrated, when Rick finds him. Rick inhales like he's going to shout but it never comes. Vyvyan fits the crook of his elbow over his eyes so he doesn't have to look at him. The mattress depresses beside his hip when Rick sits.

'I found you, Vyvyan,' Rick whispers. Vyvyan tries to tune him out. He thinks it's working for a moment, until he hears the faint ticking of his watch and realises that Rick is actually not saying anything. There is not a sound leaving Rick's mouth. It seems such a profound moment of juxtaposition that Vyvyan can't even congratulate him lest he unbalance the fickleness of the moment.

In the silence, he almost dozes. Just a tier or two away from it until Rick eventually shifts his weight and lies down, arm pressing against Vyvyan's.

'I only ask because I'm worried,' Rick says, still quiet but not whispering anymore. It takes a moment for the low tone to register. 'It may be stupid of me, but there you have it. I worry.'

Vyvyan doesn't say anything.

'We all know something happened. The others talk about it when you're not there. Neil thinks it's about your mum. Mike thinks you've got cancer. You don't, do you?'

Vyvyan moves his elbow down.

'What do you think?'

'That you don't.' Rick laughs lightly. 'Preposterous thought, really.'

'About what happened. What do you think?'

'I don't know. I thought… maybe that you're leaving. Moving out or something. But you're hardly likely to be upset over that, are you.' Rick laughs again, a small huff that doesn't quite categorise as a sigh. 'No, I suppose not,' he answers himself, trailing off.

'My brother died.'

Rick is still for a moment, then he turns slightly.

'My step-brother, Neal.' Vyvyan closes his eyes. 'He was ten.'

One of Rick's fingers settles on his arm. Just one, the very tip of it against Vyvyan's skin. Vyvyan thinks about that so his breath doesn't spill from him all at once. He lets in go in as measured a pace as he can.

'Sorry,' Rick says.

'For a second—' The muscles in Vyvyan's throat push together, and he has to try and lift his head to loosen them. 'I thought she meant Neil.'

It sits bitter in his mouth, ringing hollow. Rick turns further, arm coming up around Vyvyan's chest. Vyvyan pushes him off.

'I'm not playing this game anymore,' Vyvyan says when he's standing, and leaves.

* * *

Rick has told the others. They stand stiff around Vyvyan, now. They look him in the eye. It's not normal. He doesn't know why he thought Rick might keep it to himself. He doesn't know why he told Rick in the first place. Rick is a weasel, Vyvyan knew that. Still, they don't ask him questions and so it's fine. Vyvyan's got no answers to give. Vyvyan doesn't even care. Or… or he does, but he's not invested. His neurotransmitters care. The rest of him is just tired.

Rick asks tentatively one day, after Vyvyan has come back inside from the back yard, if his mother has checked in on him. Vyvyan says he would have seen her if she did, and Rick leaves it alone.

Vyvyan kicks the railings off the bannister one day, and Neil attempts some sort of smile when Vyvyan helps him pick them all up. His shoulders seem less tensed. When Vyvyan sets off a chemical explosion in the toilet, Neil's shoulders droop back to their usual position. He's okay, and Vyvyan's okay, and they didn't have to talk to get there.

Things inch back to normal. Vyvyan laughs at the television. He throws Rick's record player out onto the street. He gets an accidental concussion from hitting his forehead stars too hard and Neil makes him recite the alphabet backwards, and then forwards when neither of them can do it.

Things are almost right until he gets the letter.

The funeral is going to be on Tuesday, it says. It's Wednesday when Vyvyan reads it.

He supposes it's Rick who reads it next, even though Vyvyan had jammed it back into the envelope before he'd left it on the kitchen table. Either way, it's all three of them who come out to see him.

Vyvyan is sitting with the tree, prodding at the new shoot beginning to bud at the very top.

'Vyvyan?' Mike asks. Neil sits beside him, the other two stay standing.

'What.'

'Do you want us to do something?'

Vyvyan wants him to stop talking about it.

'No.'

'Do you want to go and see it?'

Vyvyan sticks a loose end of tape back onto the wood. It peels off again.

'We can come with you,' Mike adds carefully. His hand comes to rest on Vyvyan's shoulder, at the same time as Neil's knee touches his. Rick's hand eventually presses lightly against his arm.

Vyvyan rearranges some of the leaves, setting them straight. Neil had told him it was good that they were a dark colour, it meant they had lots of nutrients. He said if the plant hadn't started declining by now then it meant the roots had taken hold, and it has a chance to grow. Neil had said it like it was symbolic. The tree isn't a metaphor, it's just something he found on the side of the road. Something to occupy his time. It's just a tree.

'Maybe later,' Vyvyan says quietly.


End file.
